Chapter 6 #2
I shrugged and walked to the fridge for a beer and called out to Holly. “Yo, Holl. Want a beer?”
Holly appeared at the kitchen island that separated the living room from the kitchen.
She looked in at Enid and me, her eyes going back and forth as she took it all in.
“This is Enid,” I introduced Enid. “She’s the cook. She cooks Tuesday through Thursday.”
“Claudine doesn’t cook anymore?”
Claudine had been the main cook at the farm since my dad was still here.
“Claudine’s first grandchild was born within minutes of her second, and she decided that she’d move closer to them,” I explained.
“She sent her best friend’s daughter here, Enid, to cook for us.
” I gestured at Enid who was hanging onto every word.
“But my sister’s been covering along with Enid.
” I moved around the counter to hand Holly the beer and lowered my voice so only she could hear.
“Truthfully, I’d love for Sorcha to do it full time.
She’s amazing. But her priorities are grandbaby-focused, too.
So we’re just in limbo as we try to find a new normal.
” I looked toward Enid. “Enid is…difficult.”
“Oh.” She frowned, keeping her voice low. “I really loved her cooking. But Sorcha is amazing, too. Didn’t she learn from Claudine?”
Fuckin’ same.
It was a pain in the ass to have to find someone who A, knew what they were doing, and B, didn’t bother the shit out of me.
Sorcha might bother the shit out of me, being as she was my sister and all, but she knew how to cook for a crowd. Not to mention she cooked like a damn dream. And she didn’t come onto me every time I walked into the room like Enid did.
“She still cooks on the weekends. Mondays and Fridays we’re on our own, though.”
“I can cook on those days,” Enid pointed out, interjecting like always.
“It’s not necessary,” I said, tired of the old argument, yet not wanting to piss her off to the point where she quit.
I still needed her. I couldn’t believe that she’d come highly recommended by Claudine.
“For now. Sorcha always cooks twice as much on Sundays for Monday’s dinners.
And sometimes she even sets up crockpot meals.
Fridays, no one eats here anyway since everyone’s off spending their paycheck. ”
“Oh, okay.” Enid frowned. “I guess if you don’t need me, I’m headed out.”
“Thanks, Enid,” I grumbled. “Have a good weekend.”
Thank God tomorrow was Friday.
I got a little break from her.
Enid left, leaving the food she’d cooked on the stove for us to clean up.
Not that I had a problem with that, but that was part of her job.
“You’re so good with women, Dad,” Catalina teased.
I flipped her off.
Catalina laughed as she walked to the junk drawer in the kitchen and extracted a pen.
She placed it next to Holly’s paperwork and went back to admiring the dog in her hands.
“You’re not keeping it,” I said as I scooped up a healthy portion of the mashed potatoes. “Holly, you eaten yet?”
“Oh, that’s okay. I don’t need…” Holly said as she flipped through the pages. “This says that all my meals are free, too.”
“Well, the ones that get cooked,” I pointed out. “Fridays you’re on your own.”
“I don’t think it’s necessary to add that, too,” she pointed out.
“Enid or Sorcha is already here cooking. Sorcha makes enough to feed everyone, including any extra guests that just so happen to be at the ranch,” I said. “Like right now, I have enough food to feed another eight people. So…food?”
Holly eventually nodded her head.
I reached for the paper plates and handed her one from across the island.
She grabbed it from my hand and nervously twisted it around while waiting until I was completely out of the kitchen and sitting farther down the island before getting her own.
She got a minuscule portion, but I didn’t say anything.
I wasn’t the food police.
I didn’t have to force food down a grown woman’s throat.
I could handle the irrational urge to feed her that was almost overpowering in its intensity.
And, for some reason, I didn’t think that she would be too happy about me pointing out that she looked really skinny.
Too skinny.
“You should come to the fish fry tomorrow.” DeeDee came into the kitchen and immediately walked to the fridge where she yanked the ice cream out of the freezer. “Dad, we need more cookie dough ice cream.”
I eyed the cookie dough ice cream that I’d literally bought yesterday.
“What happened to the stuff I bought yesterday?” I asked.
“Joe happened,” Jetty said as he came into the kitchen with an empty bowl of what looked like ice cream.
“And Cat and I are both on our period,” DeeDee supplied helpfully. “Speaking of periods.” My youngest daughter looked at me. “We need more pads. Though I was thinking about trying tampons. Pads are weird.”
I shook my head. “Just add it to the grocery pickup, and I’ll go into town tomorrow and get it all during lunch.”
Once upon a time, before I became a girl dad, period talk made me uncomfortable.
Now, it was just a part of life.
“I can do the pickup, actually,” Jetty offered. “I have to take Joe to the doctor anyway.”
I nodded. “That’s cool. Thank you.”
Holly’s eyes were wide and curious as she looked at everything going on around us.
She didn’t add to the conversation, but she heard every single word that was said.
She fit seamlessly into the family and didn’t flinch when the girls directed questions her way.
“Holly,” DeeDee said. “What’s the worst thing that you had to deal with this week?”
Holly looked over at Jetty and winced. “Uhhh…”
“I heard about it,” Jetty muttered darkly. “I’m sorry that they called you out to do that.”
“What happened?” DeeDee asked.
Catalina stopped scooping her ice cream to level her gaze on Holly.
“I…”
Holly didn’t have to finish.
Jetty did.
“My parents’ bison were attacked by the same wolves that got your cows,” Jetty grumbled darkly. “My parents let them suffer in agony until Holly got there. She had to euthanize all of them.”
I cursed.
Farming and ranch work wasn’t fuckin’ easy.
In fact, it was really hard.
Sometimes you had to do things you didn’t want to do, and you couldn’t let your animals needlessly suffer. It bothered me to no end to see people who had no clue what they were doing owning animals and—intentionally or unintentionally—hurting them with their ignorance.
“Something needs to be done about those wolves,” Holly said quietly, moving her mashed potatoes around on her plate for a short moment before taking a bite. “Now that they know there’s easy prey here…”
That’s exactly what I’d said to Creed.
“What do you think about the fish fry tomorrow, Holly?” DeeDee pushed.
“I…” She hesitated, unsure what to say. How to turn down a thirteen-year-old gently. “I think I have to pack.”
“We can help you with that,” Cat suggested as she held up the dog in her hands. “And we can spend some time with this little guy!”
I blew out a breath, rather grateful that she hadn’t straight-up asked to keep it.
Out of all of my kids, Cat was the damn bleeding heart.
That was why we always ended up getting lame ducks and chickens that didn’t lay any damn eggs.
Hell, just last week, she’d asked if we could keep an alpaca.
I’d been sort of, maybe a little bit, kind of happy that the alpaca had died before I could say no.
The damn thing was older than dirt, and the farmer that’d had it had died. Everyone had scrambled to make sure that all the animals had homes, but the alpaca had been mean and no one else had wanted it.
“I don’t know…”
“Dad, we can use the farm truck, right?” Cat asked. “I don’t think that everything will fit into Holly’s car. Holly, you still have that car, right?”
Holly grimaced. “I do. But I think I might need to sell it if I’m living out here again. Its suspension is kind of a mess…”
That was an understatement.
The entire car had been a fuckin’ mess.
Court, our resident mechanic, had taken one look at it and declared it a disaster unfit to drive.
A few months ago, Holly’s car had broken down at work. Boone’s girl, Nettie, had let Holly take her car home.
Meanwhile, we’d taken Holly’s car to Court’s shop and gotten him to fix it as best as he could.
Which, inevitably, wasn’t much.
There was only so much you could do with a car that’d been used hard and put up wet.
“Why don’t you just drive the farm truck?” Cat suggested. “It’s not like we drive it. It sits there, and then Dad complains when we don’t use it. He keeps the insurance up on it, and it runs. The only problem is, it’s a rough ride.”
My girls had been driving since they were old enough to hold the wheel straight. And they definitely had favorite vehicles to drive. The oldest farm truck, a 1978 Ford, was a bit rough around the edges. But it drove like a dream and was sentimental. I’d never get rid of it.
“I couldn’t…”
“It’s actually part of the contract.” Cat pointed to the middle paragraph. “Dad knows how rough the roads are out here. Aunt Sorcha can’t even get her little Beemer down the road to the ranch anymore. She has to bring Uncle Major’s truck.”
“It’s on my to-do list to fix.”
It’d been at the bottom of my list for months. But since it didn’t really affect me, it wasn’t something I was going to get fixed right away.
“So that’s settled.” Cat nuzzled the dog to her face. “We’ll all go help you pack tomorrow. Then Dad can come over and lift the heavy stuff. Do you have a lot of heavy stuff?”
“No.” Holly shook her head, unused to getting railroaded.
Holly’s and my gaze met over the top of Cat’s head.
Welcome to my life, my gaze said.
She widened hers at me, but then looked away, back to her food that she’d pretty much finished.
“What’s settled?” Joe asked as she came into the room wearing a baggy sweatshirt that had been mine once upon a time. If I didn’t look too hard and squinted, I could almost pretend that she hadn’t gotten knocked up.
“Holly’s moving in. We’re helping her move tomorrow. She’s coming to the barbecue, and she’s also going to be driving Dad’s old truck,” DeeDee said as she set the ice cream down in front of me with a spoon. “Can you finish scooping this out for me? It’s hard.”
I did as asked, giving her way more than she wanted.
Holly eyed the carton with longing.
“Want some?” I tilted it toward her.
There wasn’t much, but enough to hit the spot.
“I shouldn’t…”
“Here.” DeeDee slid a spoon across the table at her. “What kind of ice cream is your favorite?”